Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/559

543 fundamental positions in the Platonic theology and doctrine of ideas, and are appreciatively and lucidly handled by the author. The Platonic theology gives the key to the Aristotelian. Corresponding to the Platonic and  is the Aristotelian, which like the former is the highest good, and corresponding to the world of ideas is the world of immanent ends. Herein Willmann is not reviving the attempt, which dates from the time of the Neoplatonists, to reconcile the Aristotelian and Platonic systems, but makes some very suggestive comparisons between the two, without losing sight of their fundamental differences. The author gives an interesting exposition of the idealistic movements in the Hellenistic-Roman period, and treats with special insight the Mysticism of the Neo-platonists, for dealing with which he is well equipped by a certain bias of temperament. He evidently regards the things which lie furthest from the reason, but nearest to the heart, as after all the most important for us, in which belief no one will quarrel with him.

Apart from certain sins of omission and commission, such as the scant mention of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and the belaboring of Democritus and the Epicureans, who have really no place at all in a volume with this title, the work is a monument of extensive historical and philosophical learning. Although it will probably not be the definitive work on the history of Idealism, it will place Willmann's successor in this important and laborious enterprise under an immense obligation for a rich collection of materials and sources. One cannot but feel, however, that much of the material had better have remained unused, and that the compass of the book has been unnecessarily increased by incorporating a great deal that is beside the issue.

, PH.D., Instructor in Ethics, Columbia College. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895.—pp. vii, 470. }}

This volume represents another attempt to supply the needed Introduction to Ethics for the use of English-speaking students. The author is, in several respects, well fitted to write such a book. He is conservative without being bigoted, appreciates the need of careful and original analysis in the case of controverted questions, and writes with every evidence of candor and good temper.

It must be confessed, however, that the result is, in many ways, a disappointment. In the first place, the method of analysis, so helpful when judiciously employed, is used greatly to excess. Distinction